The hydroelectric project encapsulates national ambitions, but it's time for a debate about the kind of development Brazil needs I recently witnessed a conversation between someone working for the Brazilian federal government and an environmentalist; both were Workers' party (PT) supporters (the ruling party of President Dilma Rousseff).
"I'm in favour of the construction of the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant," the former said, "but I concede it's not a 'left versus right' issue."
"It isn't," the latter replied. "Or if it is, maybe the left isn't who you think."
The scene encapsulates a dimension that the Belo Monte issue could yet acquire: a watershed moment for a number of people who have supported the PT government so far; the crossing of a line that would make them question their future allegiances. This, however, is not yet the case; and while the issue has been getting growing coverage abroad, its impact in Brazil has so far been somewhat dulled. To understand why that is allows us to think through some of the deeper genealogies of the Latin American left, as well as some of the contradictions of its present predicament.
As soon as it appeared as a discourse in the 1930s and 1940s, "national developmentalism" became the middle ground for a very wide spectrum of political forces in the region. One of the characteristics of the phenomenon of historical populism (as opposed to the loose term of abuse the word has become today) was precisely its capacity to ride on the back of contradictory interests; its central operation consisted in making "national development" mean all things to all people. The cycle of military governments in the region, inaugurated by the Brazilian coup of 1964, can be understood as the moment when the contradictions became too intense for the middle to hold, and a decision was forced between leftwing (radical reformism) and rightwing (conservative modernisation) national development projects.
The recent rise of progressive governments in the region is, in one sense, a resumption of that moment – an opportunity, at a very different conjuncture, to partially recover the path then violently blocked. That is certainly the case in generational terms: even as yesterday's young revolutionaries, presidents like Brazil's Dilma Rousseff and Uruguay's Pepe Mujica, were formed politically by the developmentalist "consensus".
It is symptomatic that Belo Monte was first idealised by the military regime, as part of its 1970s "Big Brazil" policy – a programme of state-sponsored development based on gigantic flagship projects such as the Transamazonian highway, a black hole of money and men, unfinished to this day. "Development" here meant centralised planning and an ideal of absolute mastery over nature where the environment figured as an obstacle to growth. "National" meant managing people and nature as so many variables to be manipulated in the name of the national interest.
But there was more. The state's capacity to bend things to its will was ultimately premised on the power to enforce this will at any cost. The model tended to reinforce extreme concentrations of wealth, with spectacular riches going to a few economic groups while wages generally were kept down by force.
With the PT in power, though, Brazil has seen its first period of sustained economic growth since the 1970s. Savvy foreign policy nous has made it a big international player, and there is widespread optimism that Brazil will finally make good on its longstanding promise to be a "country of the future". What is more, it has managed to do so while distributing wealth, and boasts remarkable records in poverty reduction and enhancing access to basic rights. National development, then, is not only back up in the agenda, but this time, it seems to work.
You'd therefore excuse PT members, government supporters and voters who feel they have never had it so good for thinking that, sad as the loss of 60,000 hectares of forest and the displacement of 40,000 people may be, building Belo Monte is a national necessity. Now the country is growing, it cannot stop. And for it not to stop, it needs energy. This energy must come from somewhere. The interest of the many trumps that of the few; rational pragmatism overrides romantic idealism.
The problem, many argue, is that it is the very rationality of the project that is questionable. The installed capacity of 11GW, which would place it as the third largest hydroelectric plant in the world, will not be effective for most of the year; on average, it will run at 39% of that. Private-sector analysts suggest its cost, currently estimated at BR20bn (approximately $12bn), could go up by 50% before completion. This will essentially come from BNDES, a public bank, as the project is deemed too risky and unpredictable to invest in.
Still, the progressive developmentalist argument goes, to oppose the production of more energy is to oppose the economic progress of Brazil's poor, which in turns fuels increased consumption. Besides, Belo Monte means clean energy.
There are two problems with that. The first is that hydropower is not as clean as thought. Reservoirs have high emissions of CO2 and methane (with a warming effect 25 times stronger than CO2) as a consequence of decaying matter underwater; not to mention the dark irony of calling "clean" the impact on the area's fauna, flora and people, especially indigenous people, both contacted and uncontacted. (It does not help that, as far as variables to be manipulated in the national interest go, the rights of indigenous peoples rank very low in the Brazilian imaginary.)
The second is that the bulk of Belo Monte's output seems destined not to supply consumers, but to power energy-intensive industries in the region, mostly mining and aluminium. This means not only more future deforestation and displacement, but also a model of development that entrenches inequalities of wealth and reinforces the country's position in the international market as an exporter of low added-value primary commodities.
These tensions have been there since the beginning of the Latin American "Pink Tide": the social and political advances of the last decade have had primary exports as their economic condition. This has meant both a return to the old dreams of centrally-planned rapid modernisation, and a compromise between increased state participation in the economy and big business, such as mining and agribusiness. In Brazil, many now wonder if the emphasis on "making it big", evidenced in large-scale projects such as Belo Monte or the BNDES policy of creating "Brazilian worldbeaters" (large transnationals in fields such as mining and food) might not be putting the country on a path that will, in the long run, undo the social achievements of the last decade.
Brazil's stance in climate negotiations has often been highly commended, although that is arguably a case of looking good by comparison. One of the tenets of its negotiating position has been the basic principle of climate justice that the heavier burden of emission reductions must fall on the shoulders of those countries with a historically higher emission record, thus allowing developing countries room to industrialise, develop infrastructure and grow – presumably (or hopefully) eradicating poverty in the process. Opponents see the flagship status Belo Monte has acquired – including the way in which the government has ridden roughshod over environmental legislation and local consultations to make the project viable – as signalling a choice for a model of development that is both environmentally more aggressive and socially less fair.
They call, instead, for a more decentralised and diversified energetic and productive matrix, less in thrall to size for size's sake. (One argument is that more energy could be produced by making existing plants more efficient.) Appropriating a much-vaunted element of the PT's style of doing politics, some demand that participatory democracy be extended to this field as well, and call for a national conference on energy.
Given how much Latin America's left has "national development" in its genes, and how it is untarnished by the failed rightwing experiments of the 1970s, these are difficult discussions to have, especially when the country seems faced with a unique window of opportunity. Yet, contrary to how some have tried to reduce it, the watershed moment that Belo Monte could yet become does not pose a choice between development and no development. Most opponents recognise the important achievements of the last decade, and nobody is arguing that Brazil should go back to being a land of permanently unfulfilled potential.
The question is what kind of "big" Brazil should become.
"I'm in favour of the construction of the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant," the former said, "but I concede it's not a 'left versus right' issue."
"It isn't," the latter replied. "Or if it is, maybe the left isn't who you think."
The scene encapsulates a dimension that the Belo Monte issue could yet acquire: a watershed moment for a number of people who have supported the PT government so far; the crossing of a line that would make them question their future allegiances. This, however, is not yet the case; and while the issue has been getting growing coverage abroad, its impact in Brazil has so far been somewhat dulled. To understand why that is allows us to think through some of the deeper genealogies of the Latin American left, as well as some of the contradictions of its present predicament.
As soon as it appeared as a discourse in the 1930s and 1940s, "national developmentalism" became the middle ground for a very wide spectrum of political forces in the region. One of the characteristics of the phenomenon of historical populism (as opposed to the loose term of abuse the word has become today) was precisely its capacity to ride on the back of contradictory interests; its central operation consisted in making "national development" mean all things to all people. The cycle of military governments in the region, inaugurated by the Brazilian coup of 1964, can be understood as the moment when the contradictions became too intense for the middle to hold, and a decision was forced between leftwing (radical reformism) and rightwing (conservative modernisation) national development projects.
The recent rise of progressive governments in the region is, in one sense, a resumption of that moment – an opportunity, at a very different conjuncture, to partially recover the path then violently blocked. That is certainly the case in generational terms: even as yesterday's young revolutionaries, presidents like Brazil's Dilma Rousseff and Uruguay's Pepe Mujica, were formed politically by the developmentalist "consensus".
It is symptomatic that Belo Monte was first idealised by the military regime, as part of its 1970s "Big Brazil" policy – a programme of state-sponsored development based on gigantic flagship projects such as the Transamazonian highway, a black hole of money and men, unfinished to this day. "Development" here meant centralised planning and an ideal of absolute mastery over nature where the environment figured as an obstacle to growth. "National" meant managing people and nature as so many variables to be manipulated in the name of the national interest.
But there was more. The state's capacity to bend things to its will was ultimately premised on the power to enforce this will at any cost. The model tended to reinforce extreme concentrations of wealth, with spectacular riches going to a few economic groups while wages generally were kept down by force.
With the PT in power, though, Brazil has seen its first period of sustained economic growth since the 1970s. Savvy foreign policy nous has made it a big international player, and there is widespread optimism that Brazil will finally make good on its longstanding promise to be a "country of the future". What is more, it has managed to do so while distributing wealth, and boasts remarkable records in poverty reduction and enhancing access to basic rights. National development, then, is not only back up in the agenda, but this time, it seems to work.
You'd therefore excuse PT members, government supporters and voters who feel they have never had it so good for thinking that, sad as the loss of 60,000 hectares of forest and the displacement of 40,000 people may be, building Belo Monte is a national necessity. Now the country is growing, it cannot stop. And for it not to stop, it needs energy. This energy must come from somewhere. The interest of the many trumps that of the few; rational pragmatism overrides romantic idealism.
The problem, many argue, is that it is the very rationality of the project that is questionable. The installed capacity of 11GW, which would place it as the third largest hydroelectric plant in the world, will not be effective for most of the year; on average, it will run at 39% of that. Private-sector analysts suggest its cost, currently estimated at BR20bn (approximately $12bn), could go up by 50% before completion. This will essentially come from BNDES, a public bank, as the project is deemed too risky and unpredictable to invest in.
Still, the progressive developmentalist argument goes, to oppose the production of more energy is to oppose the economic progress of Brazil's poor, which in turns fuels increased consumption. Besides, Belo Monte means clean energy.
There are two problems with that. The first is that hydropower is not as clean as thought. Reservoirs have high emissions of CO2 and methane (with a warming effect 25 times stronger than CO2) as a consequence of decaying matter underwater; not to mention the dark irony of calling "clean" the impact on the area's fauna, flora and people, especially indigenous people, both contacted and uncontacted. (It does not help that, as far as variables to be manipulated in the national interest go, the rights of indigenous peoples rank very low in the Brazilian imaginary.)
The second is that the bulk of Belo Monte's output seems destined not to supply consumers, but to power energy-intensive industries in the region, mostly mining and aluminium. This means not only more future deforestation and displacement, but also a model of development that entrenches inequalities of wealth and reinforces the country's position in the international market as an exporter of low added-value primary commodities.
These tensions have been there since the beginning of the Latin American "Pink Tide": the social and political advances of the last decade have had primary exports as their economic condition. This has meant both a return to the old dreams of centrally-planned rapid modernisation, and a compromise between increased state participation in the economy and big business, such as mining and agribusiness. In Brazil, many now wonder if the emphasis on "making it big", evidenced in large-scale projects such as Belo Monte or the BNDES policy of creating "Brazilian worldbeaters" (large transnationals in fields such as mining and food) might not be putting the country on a path that will, in the long run, undo the social achievements of the last decade.
Brazil's stance in climate negotiations has often been highly commended, although that is arguably a case of looking good by comparison. One of the tenets of its negotiating position has been the basic principle of climate justice that the heavier burden of emission reductions must fall on the shoulders of those countries with a historically higher emission record, thus allowing developing countries room to industrialise, develop infrastructure and grow – presumably (or hopefully) eradicating poverty in the process. Opponents see the flagship status Belo Monte has acquired – including the way in which the government has ridden roughshod over environmental legislation and local consultations to make the project viable – as signalling a choice for a model of development that is both environmentally more aggressive and socially less fair.
They call, instead, for a more decentralised and diversified energetic and productive matrix, less in thrall to size for size's sake. (One argument is that more energy could be produced by making existing plants more efficient.) Appropriating a much-vaunted element of the PT's style of doing politics, some demand that participatory democracy be extended to this field as well, and call for a national conference on energy.
Given how much Latin America's left has "national development" in its genes, and how it is untarnished by the failed rightwing experiments of the 1970s, these are difficult discussions to have, especially when the country seems faced with a unique window of opportunity. Yet, contrary to how some have tried to reduce it, the watershed moment that Belo Monte could yet become does not pose a choice between development and no development. Most opponents recognise the important achievements of the last decade, and nobody is arguing that Brazil should go back to being a land of permanently unfulfilled potential.
The question is what kind of "big" Brazil should become.
Origin
Source: Guardian
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